Late last year, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia (UC) intro­duced a new iden­ti­ty.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, the UC sys­tem only used its seal as its pri­ma­ry visu­al iden­ti­fi­er, where it was abused with impuni­ty. We feel it is an impor­tant com­po­nent of the university’s visu­al ecosys­tem. But it is a non-dis­tinc­tive sym­bol which serves an impor­tant bureau­crat­ic func­tion. Now we lim­it its use to for­mal sys­temwide com­mu­ni­ca­tions, diplo­mas, offi­cial regen­tal and pres­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and oth­er offi­cial doc­u­ments. Many of our cam­pus­es, and oth­er uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try have lim­it­ed use of their offi­cial seals in sim­i­lar ways.

From this per­spec­tive, this is less of a rebrand­ing exer­cise, but instead the cre­ation of a coher­ent, con­sis­tent, and rel­e­vant brand iden­ti­ty where before there was none.

I’m dig­gin’ the logo/identity intro­duc­tion that the team did. It’s cre­ative, and does a great job explain­ing where things have been inspired from:1

The mono­gram:

Here are old mate­ri­als with the old brand­ing guide­lines:

Now here are mate­ri­als with the new:

The Design team
Art Direc­tor and Inter­ac­tive Design­er: Kir­ill Mazin
Inter­ac­tive Design­er: Matt Glass
Design­er: Natasha Foote
Design­er: Jason Huang
Sr. Design­er: Ethan Davis
Design­er: Jose Pan­to­ja
Devel­op­er: Adam Mangum
Mul­ti­me­dia Direc­tor: Laris­sa Branin
Sr. Pro­duc­er: Jess Whee­lock
Pro­duc­er: Zak Long
Cre­ative Direc­tor: Vanes­sa Cor­rea

Source: Brand New & Rock Paper Ink

1. Note: “inspired from,” vs. replac­ing… The “con­tro­ver­sy” sort­ed out. [↩]